You guys. My dude date is 6 weeks from today. SIX. WEEKS. I’m freaking out. I don’t have everything I need. I haven’t read all the books about childbirth. I don’t know how to be a mom. I’m not ready yet. Help? For really reals. This week I suddenly started to flip out about how close the end is. I know that I’m miserable, fat, swollen, and in pain and that I said I was done being pregnant, but seriously I’m not ready. Which doesn’t really matter because the baby is going to come anyway, right? I better get my shit together. Like, soon.

Nothing new happened this week. The baby is apparently getting huge and therefore my poor pelvis is aching pretty constantly. So is my back. Sleeping is difficult and I can only stay in bed for about 6 hours before it becomes pointless because I’m just in agony. Which, I guess, is pretty good training for how my life will be 2 months from now when I’m only sleeping an hour and a half at a time, right? Whatever. I’m tired. It sucks. We’re going to visit my in-laws this weekend because they want to see us one more time before the baby comes, and while I normally wouldn’t mind (I really am lucky in the in-law department, they’re awesome), I’m sortof dreading having to look presentable (I hardly ever fix my hair or wear makeup anymore), drive somewhere (okay, so it’s only a 90 minute drive, but my pelvis hurts!), be somewhere other than my couch, etc. etc. Plus they live in Arizona which is even hotter than it is here. Which is just a dumb complaint because once you get to 100 degrees it’s all the same. For serious – 113 is no different than 105, it’s just H O T. So I should shut up and just enjoy myself. They’ll feed us good food and it’ll be fun.

Oh, there is one new development and it’s kind of my favorite thing. The baby is so big and raucous that when she moves I can now watch my belly move. So. Freaky. It totally wigs my husband out to watch her ripple across my stomach. So yeah. That’s about it. I have a doctor appointment and a sonogram on Monday, so next week’s post will hopefully be more exciting. And maybe I’ll be less panicked?

Sorry I didn’t post on time this week (because I know you were all desperately clamoring for a new post such that you spent the entire weekend wondering what happened to me), but we had a houseguest (Jason’s sister) this weekend and there wasn’t time. We had a lot of fun taking her to see our favorite band play. It was their first time in Vegas and we were so excited that they came. We had begun to think that the only way we’d ever see them again was to go to Cali, which we would gladly have done, but yay! They came here. Check their tour dates; if they ever come to your town do yourself a favor and GO SEE THEM. It won’t be expensive and you will not regret it, I promise. They’re amazing.

On to the pregnancy thing. Only 7 more weeks, yo. I’m getting a little nervous. And a little bigger. And a little more uncomfortable. And a little more tired. That whole pelvic pain thing just gets worse every day. And walking around makes me feel like an elephant. Except elephants are more graceful, I’m more like a bull in a china shop or something equally clumsy and destructive. My Pregnancy Idiocy is getting worse too. Last Wednesday morning I woke up just before Jason left for work. As I stumbled around trying to wake up he said “it was getting a little warm in here so I decided to turn the oven off.” Huh? Yeah. I left the oven on ALL EFFING NIGHT. Sigh. Also, I officially have Fred Flintstone feet – fat and flat. It’s quite horrifying, really. I’m comforted by the fact that the same thing happened to my mom, and that hers returned to normal shortly after childbirth. I am soooo ready for this baby to get here and to not be pregnant anymore.

In more exciting news, my cloth diapers showed up! Like I mentioned before, I’m very excited about them, and when I have more time and/or have started using them I will probably go on and on about them. All I will say now is that they are very cute and that they make me more excited about the baby getting here. Jason’s sister brought more donated stuff with her (seriously, does everyone but me have this many friends? I have none, so I guess everybody has more friends than me, but wow. If y’all have babies, make sure you either have friends to donate stuff to you, or that you have a kick ass sister-in-law like I do) so I now have a really nice breast pump and a bassinet for L to spend her first few weeks in. Now I just need her to get here. Have I mentioned I’m excited?

I am 32 weeks pregnant. Do you know what this means? I am due in 8 weeks. Eight weeks people! E I G HT!!! That’s 2 months. Holy shit. When I found out I was pregnant I was about 5 weeks along and had 35 to go, which sounded like forever. I mean, that was way back before Christmas. And now here I am, right on the verge of delivery. It’s scary and wonderful at the same time. I’m so excited to see my little L and try to figure out who she looks like and who she acts like (and also to not be pregnant anymore), but sometimes at night I have those little niggling doubts about my ability to be a mother. What if I can’t breastfeed properly? What if my baby cries all of the time and hates me? What if my diaper changing abilites are subpar? And why do these panic fests always happen at night while my husband is slumbering peacefully so I’m just lying there by myself NOT SLEEPING AT ALL? Oh well. Everything always looks brighter in the morning.

So this week my pelvis has started to ache. It hurts to sit, and unfortunately I’m scrambling to get done with my school before the baby gets here, so I’m sitting on my pelvis for roughly 6 hours a day. And then when I stand up it hurts. And when I wake up in the morning it hurts. And when I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom it hurts. Achy pelvis, my least favorite pregnancy symptom. Well, maybe the barfing was worse, but it’s a hard choice. I’ve done all the googling etc. and apparently this is normal. My pubic symphysis is starting to loosen up (because of everybody’s favorite hormone, relaxin) so the ischia are all loosey goosey. This is a good thing, because in 2 months (ohmygod) a big ol’ baby head has to push through there. But for right now, the big ol’ baby head is sitting on the loosey goosey bones and making everything hurt. In case you were curious, and have never seen one before, here’s a helpful diagram of the pelvis:

Anyway, I guess I should consider myself lucky because so far I don’t have any of the other usual 3rd trimester complaints like horrible heartburn and/or reflux, Braxton Hicks contractions, leaky boobs etc. So there, I’ve stopped complaining.

In other exciting news, I placed my first order for cloth diapers! I’m so excited about them. And sure, you’re probably thinking: A. Who the hell gets excited about diapers and B. What kind of dirty hippie uses CLOTH EFFING DIAPERS? I mean, they have disposable ones now. Well, in answer to your questions, have you seen cloth diapers lately? They’re all fancy and new fangled and super cute, who wouldn’t get excited? As for the dirty hippie thing, I did live in Oregon for 10 years so… but honestly, I’m doing it for the cost savings. Do you know how expensive diapers are? Shoot. You can do all kinds of searches for cost comparisons and find different numbers, but when I was looking into it I discovered that to disposie diaper a kid for 1 year it’ll cost between 800 and 1000 dollars, depending upon which kind of diaper you use and where you live etc. etc. Most kids don’t potty train until what, nearly 3? That’s almost 3,000 bucks! And, what if you have more than 1 kid (which we’re already considering)? With cloth diapers you have the choice of going cheap, or going expensive, but either way you’re still probably going to save money. I’m going with a mix of cheapo and expensive, because I want to try some different things to see what I like, but I still figure I’m going to end up spending around 600 bucks. Yes, total. And that’ll diaper my kid from start to finish. And most diapers are hardy enough that you can use them on more than 1 kid. That’s thousands of dollars saved! Thousands of dollars can be used for down payments on houses, or kids’ college funds, or vacations to TAHITI. I’m just sayin’. Yes, I forgot that you have to add in the cost of laundering the diapers, but really, you’re still saving tons of money. And that’s not even considering the health and environmental advantages to cloth diapering. But I’ll stop boring you. For now. I can’t promise that I won’t wax poetic over diapers again in the future, because I probably will. Especially when they arrive and I get to compare the different types that I’m getting. And after I start using them and figure out which ones I like and hate. So, yeah. Prepare yourself for more diatribes on cloth diapers. Probably with pictures! And links to my favorite ones! Lucky y’all!

31 weeks. Which means I’m having a baby in 2 months. I guess I’m officially 7 months pregnant. Time goes by so quickly, it’s almost frightening. I’m finally getting sick of being pregnant. It’s hot, I’m starting to feel nauseous again, it hurts to do just about everything, I can’t even get off of the couch by myself, and as the baby grows larger I grow more uncomfortable. She has taken to pushing things (arms, legs, what have you) into bits of my belly for long periods of time and its kind of annoying because it hurts, and because she usually chooses to do this just as I turn my light off and try to go to sleep. I miss sleep. I don’t do it well anymore. Baby marching on my insides, back hurting on my outside, peeing every 45-60 minutes – yeah, no sleep. Some people claim this is good practice for after the baby arrives. I want to beat those people about the neck and shoulders. Just shut up! That isn’t very comforting when I’m already freaked out about how I’m going to handle a baby. Also, the stretch marks have appeared. I already have stretch marks, because I’ve been fat before, but they’re little silvery ones that are only noticeable if you’re right up close (so basically I’m probably the only one who sees them) – these monsters that I spotted the other day? Wow. I thought they were bruises at first and I was all like what the hell did I do to bruise the underside of my belly?! Alas – not bruises. Oh well. I’m 35, it’s not like I had a lot of good years left on this body anyway, am I right? Cold comfort.

In other news, my sister-in-law who has already donated a fafillion things to this pregnancy (she apparently has a lot of friends, who have had a lot of girl babies and saved all of their stuff, that want to donate it all to me – a complete stranger) texted me that she now has a bassinet as well. And a breast pump (sorry if breast pumps make you uncomfortable, but I am pregnant after all, these things happen). This is on top of 4 enormous bags of clothes, an ergobaby carrier (for which I am thoroughly excited because I was going to buy either that or something similar and they are SPENDY), a baby bath tub, mountains of blankets… and a ton of other stuff that I’m forgetting all about. The point is, I don’t think we’re going to have to spend a whole lot of our own money on baby L, and for that I am very grateful because we don’t have any money right now. I mean, things aren’t as dire as they once were (see many previous posts about money-panicked AJ), but still, baby stuff is expensive. So, thank you Universe (and Jason’s sister for having generous friends) for looking out for us. Someday it will be my turn to give back.

This is just a short post to say that female nurse practitioners (especially those that are slash midwives) are better than male OB/GYN/FACOGs any day. I went to my midwife yesterday who reviewed my last ultrasound that the mean FACOG (who called my baby Godzilla) had sent over. She told me that it was normal, nothing to worry about. When I said “except for my big baby” she informed me that it was a completely normal size and that furthermore, fetal weight as estimated by ultrasound is never an exact measurement and can in fact be off by as much as TWO POUNDS. The jackass male doctor never mentioned that. I’m just sayin’.

So I’m feeling slightly better about the whole Godzilla Baby/enormous amount of amniotic fluid. Like my mom said, who cares if L is a little bigger than she is supposed to be? Really, I don’t care how big my baby is as long as she’s okay and I’m okay. I mostly am just sick of having things to worry about. But, I guess that is what pregnancy is all about. How can I not worry? There’s a life growing inside of me, one for which I am solely responsible, and will continue to be after she is born. That my friends equals worry. And love. And excitement. I’m getting very excited. I’m still not going to continue with the weekly emailed measurements and fruit comparisons because they’re stupid and arbitrary, especially considering that my baby has already surpassed them. But there are other fun things to talk about. We had another shower last weekend and got some more cool gifts. Including the very first set of cloth diapers! I think I’m overly excited about the cloth diapers, but they’re so cute nowadays! Not like when my mom was using them on me and they were just ugly white and covered with those hideous plastic pants. There’s a few different kinds and brands that I want to try and very soon I will be placing a couple of orders for more. So be prepared to hear allll about them, and to be possibly inundated with pictures. Anyway, back to the shower. It was fun, if not a little awkward. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law threw it for me at the MIL’s house. It was mostly for her friends so it was a bunch of people I didn’t know, and who were a lot older than me. Plus, I despise being the center of attention. But, at least it wasn’t a ladies-exclusive shower so Jason got to stay and hang out with me, so it did end up being fun. Then, after everyone left we played in the pool. On the one hand, HORROR because I had to shop for and wear a bathing suit on my giant whale ass (while I was in the dressing room struggling into my highly attractive maternity suit I overheard a conversation between 2 young women, one of whom was complaining about how fat she was – had I a pie it would have been in her face) on the other hand DELIGHT because when your body is this big and has another body inside of it the feeling of being weightless in cool water is like being in heaven. When we got home we discovered that the pool at our apartment complex is finally open (c’mon people, it’s Vegas, the weather has been hot enough for the pool since April) so I plan to swim quite frequently. In fact, as soon as they open up I’m heading over there.

As I mentioned before I’m not going to concentrate on the measurements and/or how big the baby is. I think instead I’m going to move on to the HOLY SHIT ONLY (___) MORE WEEKS TO GO because that’s pretty much how I feel. If I go to my due date there are only 10 weeks left. TEN WEEKS! That’s like the blink of an eye! And, I might not go to my due date (she said hopefully, even though she suspects she will be that woman who is 2 weeks past due and doing any number of ridiculous old-wives-talesy things to try to induce labor), which means the baby could be here in as few as 8 weeks. OHMYGOD I still have so much to do. I sorted through the giant piles of clothes that we’ve received and separated them out by age, but I still have to find a place to put them all. Not to mention get a place for the baby to sleep. And a place to change diapers. And clean the rest of this dump so that it’s baby friendly. Maybe it’ll be better if I go 2 weeks past my due date.

Did I mention I’m not sleeping? Like, very well at all? Aside from all of the peeing (who designed this system whereby the ever-growing baby sits (stands on, smashes, kicks) your bladder constantly?) there’s the mind racing and the constant worrying and the back pain and the breathlessness – sleep is a thing of the past. And the dreams – they range from the idiotic (last night I was hanging out with Ellen DeGeneres who was smoking a fat blunt, she offered, I took a giant hit and then, ONLY THEN, did I remember I was pregnant and that I had just gotten my fetus high) to the horrible (maybe the gruesome, murderous images are my fault because I’ve been watching old episodes of CSI?) – I’ll spare you the details of those, to dreams of the I’m-going-to-be-a-horrible-parent persuasion (again with the breastfeeding of kitties instead of the baby, forgetting to go to the hospital when I’m in labor, not having any of the baby’s stuff ready – the list goes on). I think I’m ready for all of this to be over, and for the baby to be a regular part of our lives. 9 months is a long time. Can you imagine being an elephant? They gestate for like, 2 years. Shudder.

Follow Blog via Email

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.